Solstice Energy is switching off gas to 10 Victorian towns it can't serve profitably

In August 2025, Solstice Energy announced it would switch off its compressed gas networks and stop trucking gas into ten regional Victorian towns — Heathcote, Maldon, Marong, Swan Hill, Kerang, Nathalia, Robinvale, Terang, Lakes Entrance and Orbost — by the end of 2026, leaving more than 1,100 households to convert to bottled gas or electricity.

CEO Phaedra Deckart said the network had been doomed by its own business case: 'The basis upon which the network was built assumed a much larger demand and a much greater number of customers.' She said the company had 'tried everything to make this network viable', but trucking compressed natural gas to each town was so costly that prices would have to keep rising every year — after an 80% increase in January 2023 and a fresh 50% increase announced the week before.

Customers are left with the consequences. John Maynard, who opened a restaurant in Nathalia just over a year ago after spending $40,000 installing natural gas, learned of the switch-off from a reporter; he faces another $20,000 or more to rewire his kitchen for electricity and two to three weeks of closure. Solstice is offering $1,000 upfront payments, appliance subsidies and bottled-gas conversion support, with state rebates available for electrification.

Energy experts called the transition poorly planned. St Vincent de Paul's Gavin Dufty said the lack of coordination between Solstice and the Victorian government was 'a glaring, glaring omission', and that eighteen months was far too short for households to make such a costly decision; the Victoria Energy Policy Centre's Bruce Mountain noted the state had spent decades encouraging households onto gas before its 2022 gas substitution roadmap reversed course.

An 80% price rise in January 2023, a further 50% in August 2025; one restaurateur faced $20,000-plus to electrify a kitchen fitted with gas a year earlier.

The reticulated networks were built for demand projections that never materialised, leaving a small customer base to carry the full cost of trucked gas.

Rather than a viable rate path, the answer was successive steep increases — 80% then 50% — that signalled the model was beyond saving.

The shutdown lands the transition cost on households and small businesses that connected in good faith, some only months before the announcement.

The eighteen-month timeline left customers little room to plan major electrical or bottled-gas conversions, drawing criticism that the exit was uncoordinated with government support schemes.

Infrastructure built on rosy demand assumptions strands its customers: when the network's maths breaks, the operator can reprice or retreat, but households carry the conversion bill.

The switch-off is scheduled to run through 2026, with Solstice supporting households toward bottled gas or electrification and an energy expert predicting more Victorian gas networks will be switched off in coming years as usage falls and lines become harder to sustain.